Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism, the ancient pre-Islamic religion of Iran that survives there in isolated areas and, more prosperously, in India, where the descendants of Zoroastrian Iranian (Persian) immigrants are known as Parsis, or Parsees.

The Iranian prophet and religious reformer Zarathustra (flourished before the 6th century bce)—more widely known outside Iran as Zoroaster, the Greek form of his name)—is traditionally regarded as the founder of the religion. Zoroastrianism contains both monotheistic and dualistic features. It likely influenced the other major Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For a discussion of the context in which Zoroastrianism arose, seeancient Iranian religion.

Nature and significance

The ancient Greeks saw in Zoroastrianism the archetype of the dualistic view of the world and of human destiny. Zarathustra was supposed to have instructed Pythagoras in Babylon and to have inspired the Chaldean doctrines of astrology and magic. It is likely that Zoroastrianism influenced the development of Judaism and the birth of Christianity. The Christians, following a Jewish tradition, identified Zoroaster with Ezekiel, Nimrod, Seth, Balaam, and Baruch and even, through the latter, with Jesus Christ himself. On the other hand, as the presumed founder of astrology and magic, Zarathustra could be considered the arch-heretic.

Though Zoroastrianism was never, even in the thinking of its founder, as insistently monotheistic as, for instance, Judaism or Islam, it does represent an original attempt at unifying under the worship of one supreme god a polytheistic religion comparable to those of the ancient Greeks, Latins, Indians, and other early peoples. Its other salient feature, namely dualism, was never understood in an absolute, rigorous fashion. Good and evil fight an unequal battle in which the former is assured of triumph. God’s omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited. In this struggle all human beings must enlist because of their capacity for free choice. They do so with soul and body, not against the body, for the opposition between good and evil is not the same as the one between spirit and matter. Contrary to the Christian or Manichaean (from Manichaeism—a Hellenistic, dualistic religion founded by the Iranian prophet Mani) attitude, fasting and celibacy are proscribed except as part of the purificatory ritual. The human struggle has a negative aspect, nonetheless, in that it must strive for purity and avoid defilement by the forces of death, contact with dead matter, etc. Thus, Zoroastrian ethics, though in itself lofty and rational, has a ritual aspect that is all-pervading. On the whole, Zoroastrianism is optimistic and has remained so even through the hardship and oppression of its believers.

History

Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion

The religion of Iran before the time of Zarathustra is not directly accessible, for there are no reliable sources more ancient than those composed by or attributed to the prophet himself. It has to be studied indirectly on the basis of later documents and by a comparative approach. The language of Iran is closely akin to that of northern India, and, hence, the people of the two lands probably had common ancestors who spoke a common Indo-Aryan language. The religion of those peoples has been reconstructed by means of common elements contained in the sacred books of Iran and India, mainly the Avesta and the Vedas. Both collections exhibit the same kind of polytheism with many of the same gods, notably the Indian Mitra (the Iranian Mithra), the cult of fire, sacrifice by means of a sacred liquor (soma in India, in Iran haoma), and other parallels. There is, moreover, a list of Indo-Iranian gods in a treaty concluded about 1380 bce between the Hittite emperor and the king of Mitanni. The list includes Mitra and Varuna, Indra, and the two Nāsatyas. All of these gods also are found in the Vedas but only the first one in the Avesta, except that Indra and Nāñhaithya appear in the Avesta as demons; Varuna may have survived under another name. Important changes, then, must have taken place on the Iranian side, not all of which can be attributed to the prophet.

The Indo-Iranians appear to have distinguished from among their gods the daiva (Indo-Iranian and Old Persian equivalent of Avestan daeva and Sanskrit deva, related to the Latin deus), meaning “heavenly,” and the asura, a special class with occult powers. This situation was reflected in Vedic India; later on, asura came to signify, in Sanskrit, a kind of demon, because of the baleful aspect of the asura’s invisible power. In Iran the evolution must have been different: the ahuras were extolled to the exclusion of the daevas, who were reduced to the rank of demons.

The reformation of Zarathustra

Zarathustra (Zoroaster) was a priest of a certain ahura (Avestan equivalent of Sanskrit asura) with the epithet mazdā, “wise,” whom Zarathustra mentions once in his hymns with “the [other] ahuras.” Similarly, Darius I (522–486) and his successors worshipped Auramazda (Ahura Mazdā) “and the other gods who exist” or “Ahura Mazdā, the greatest god.” The two historically related facts are evidently parallel: on both sides the rudiments of monotheism are present, though in a more elaborate form with the prophet Zarathustra.

It has not yet been possible to place Zarathustra’s hymns, the Gāthās, in their historical context. Not a single place or person mentioned in them is known from any other source. Vishtāspa, the prophet’s protector, can only be the namesake of the father of Darius, the Achaemenid king. All that may safely be said is that Zarathustra lived somewhere in eastern Iran, far from the civilized world of western Asia, before Iran became unified under Cyrus II the Great. If the Achaemenids ever heard of him, they did not see fit to mention his name in their inscriptions nor did they allude to the beings who surrounded the great god and were later to be called the amesha spentas, or “bounteous immortals”—an essential feature of Zarathustra’s doctrine.

Religion under the Achaemenids was in the hands of the Magi, whom the Greek historian Herodotus describes as a Median tribe with special customs, such as exposing the dead, fighting evil animals, and interpreting dreams. Again, the historical connection with Zarathustra—whom Herodotus also ignores—is a hazy one. It is not known when Zarathustra’s doctrine reached western Iran, but it must have been before the time of Aristotle (384–322), who alludes to its dualism.

Darius, when he seized power in 522, had to fight a usurper, Gaumata the Magian, who pretended to be Bardiya, the son of Cyrus the Great and brother of the king Cambyses. This Magian had destroyed cultic shrines, āyadanas, which Darius restored. One possible explanation of these events is that Gaumata had adopted Zoroastrianism, a doctrine that relied on the allegiance of the common people, and therefore destroyed temples or altars to deities of the nobility. Darius, who owed his throne to the support of some noblemen, could not help favouring their cult, though he adopted Auramazda as a means of unifying his empire.

Xerxes, successor to Darius, mentioned in one of his inscriptions how at a certain (unnamed) place he substituted the worship of Auramazda for that of the daivas, which does not mean that he opposed the daeva cult as such, as a true Zoroastrian would have done, but only that he eradicated somewhere—probably in Babylon—the cult of deities alien to the religion of the ahuras. It points to a change of attitude, compared with Cyrus’s tolerance of alien religions, such as the Babylonian or the Jewish religion.

From Artaxerxes II (404–359/358) onward, the inscriptions mention, besides Auramazda, Mithra and the goddess Anahita (Anahit), which proves only a change of emphasis, not the appearance of new deities.

In consequence of Alexander’s conquest, the Iranian religion was almost totally submerged by the wave of Hellenism. At Susa, for instance, which had been one of the capital cities of the Achaemenids but where the religion of Auramazda was not indigenous, the coinage of the Seleucid and Arsacid periods does not represent a single Iranian deity.

Then the Iranian religion gradually emerged again. In Commagene in the middle of the 1st century bce, gods bear combinations of Greek and Iranian names: Zeus Oromazdes, Apollo Mithra, Helios Hermes, Artagnes Herakles Ares. The first proof of the use of a Zoroastrian calendar, implying the official recognition of Zoroastrianism, is found some 40 years earlier at Nisa (near modern Ashgabat in Turkmenistan). By then some form of orthodoxy must have been established in which Auramazda and the entities (powers surrounding him) adjoin other gods such as Mithra, the Sun, and the Moon.

In Persis (modern Fārs), from the beginning of the Christian Era to the advent of the Sāsānians (early 3rd century ce), any allusion to the fire cult disappears. The coins seem to indicate, in not showing the fire altar, that the prince had lost interest in the Iranian religion.

The Sāsānian period

With Ardashīr, the future founder of the Sāsānian dynasty, the situation was different, and this may suggest that his religious zeal—as a hereditary priest of Staxr (Istaxr)—may have helped him seize power in his native province, even before he started attacking his Arsacid suzerain, Artabanus V.

Two persons are recorded, in different sources, as helping to establish Zoroastrianism under the first Sāsānians: Kartēr and Tansar. Whereas Kartēr is known through contemporary inscriptions, most of which were written by himself, Tansar (or Tosar) is only remembered in later books. The latter tell us that Tansar, an ehrpat, or theologian, undertook the task, under Ardashīr’s command, of collecting the sacred texts and fixing the canon. Kartēr, who was already active under Ardashīr I but more so under Shāpūr and his successors, recounted his brilliant career, which reflects the birth of a hierarchy. He was still an ehrpat under Shāpūr, as he restored the “Mazdean religion…in the land of non-Iran reached by the horses and men of the king of kings.” Under Hormizd he was made Ormazd’s magupat, a term apparently created for him and meaning “chief of the Magians of Auramazda.” Under Bahrām I (273–276), Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who had enjoyed a degree of tolerance under the two preceding kings, was sacrificed to the interests of Zoroastrianism and died in prison. Bahrām II named Kartēr “Saviour of the Soul of Bahrām,” elevated him to the rank of the “grandees of the realm,” and gave him the additional titles of “judge of the empire,” “master of rites,” and “ruler of the fire of Anahit-Ardashīr at Staxr and of Anahit the Dame.” Promoted to the apex of his career, Kartēr persecuted “Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, Nasoreans [Judeo-Christians?], Christians, Maktaks [Mandeans, Manichaeans?], and Zandīks [Mazdean heretics].” Narses (293–302), who began his struggle for power when Bahrām II was still on the throne, seems to have recovered the title of chief of the Staxr temple that his predecessor and adversary had surrendered to Kartēr. Under Shāpūr II, the high priest Aturpāt, at a council summoned to fix the text of the Avesta, proved the truth of his doctrine by submitting to the ordeal of molten metal poured on his breast and was victorious over all kinds of sectarians and heretics.

Under Bahrām V (420–438), presumably, the title magupatān magupat (chief magus of the chief magi) was created. Under Qobād (or Kavādh; 488–496 and 498/499–531), Iran traversed its gravest social and religious crisis under the impact of Mazdak. This reformer, whose doctrines were partly inspired by those of Mani, was granted an interview by Qobād—as Shāpūr I had received Mani a long time before, but with a more decisive success. Perhaps the king hoped that by abolishing property and the family he would reign over a docile mass. The Mazdakites favoured the abolition of all social inequalities, chiefly of private property, the main cause of all hatred. Everything was to be held in common, including women. These views directly threatened the rich as well as the Mazdean clergy, who soon understood this. Qobād was dethroned and replaced by his brother Jāmāsp. After two years in exile, Qobād recovered his throne, but he had been cured of his egalitarian views and decided to liquidate the Mazdakites.

Khosrow I continued the work of his father, Qobād, and thus the Mazdakite upheaval made way for a strong state and an established Mazdean Church. The religious books give Khosrow the unique title of anōshirvan, “with the immortal soul,” probably for having crushed Mazdakism and for enabling the “good religion” to triumph.

Khosrow II (590/591–628) married a Christian woman and may have been a Christian himself. He was superstitious and dabbled in astrology.

Post-Islamic Iranian Zoroastrianism

Islam won a decisive victory at al-Qādisiyyah in 635 over the armies of Yazdegerd III, the last Sāsānid. Islam, in principle, tolerated the ancient religion, but conversions by persuasion or force were massive in many provinces. Zoroastrianism fomented rebellion and brought persecutions upon itself. There were pockets of survival, notably in Persis, the ancient centre of the Achaemenian and Sāsānian empires. Books were produced to save the essentials of the religion from a threatened disaster. The disaster did occur, but exactly why and how is not known. Zoroastrians, called Gabars by the Muslims, survived in Iran as a persecuted minority in small enclaves at Yazd and Kerman.

From the 10th century onward, groups of Zoroastrians emigrated to India, where they found asylum in Gujarat. Their connection with their coreligionists in Iran seems to have been almost totally broken until the end of the 15th century. Reestablished in 1477, the connection was kept up chiefly in the form of an exchange of letters until 1768. Under British rule, the Parsis, who previously had been humble agriculturists, started to enrich themselves through commerce, then through industry. They became a most prosperous and “modern” community, centred in Bombay (Mumbai). Formerly they had adopted the Gujarati language and the dress of their Hindumilieu. Later they adopted British customs, British dress, the education of girls, and the abolition of child marriage. In their enterprises as well as in their charities, they followed the example of the West. From the 19th century on, they were able to help their less-favoured brethren in Iran, either through gifts or through intervention with the government.

They also adapted themselves to their Indian culture by minimizing what was repugnant to the Hindus—namely, blood sacrifice—and they surrendered to some extent to the vogue of astrology and to theosophy. On the other hand, ever since they were attacked by Christian missionaries for their dualism, they have been emphasizing the monotheistic aspect of their doctrine.

Sources

Only the hymns, or Gāthās, are attributable to Zarathustra. They are written in various metres and in a dialect different from the rest of the Avesta, except for seven chapters, chiefly in prose, that appear to have been composed shortly after the prophet’s demise. All these texts are embedded in the Yasna, which is one of the main divisions of the Avesta and is recited by the priests during the ceremony of the same name, meaning “sacrifice.” The Visp-rat (“All the Judges”) is a Yasna augmented here and there by additional invocations and offerings to the ratus (lords) of the different classes of beings. The Vidēvdāt, or Vendidad (“Law Rejecting the Daevas”), consists of two introductory sections recounting how the law was given to human beings, followed by 18 sections of rules. The Siroza enumerates the deities presiding over the 30 days of the month. The yashts (hymns) are each addressed to one of 21 deities such as Mithra, Anahita, or Verethraghna. The Hadhoxt Nask (“Section Containing Sayings”) describes the fate of the soul after death. The Khūrda Avesta, or “Small Avesta,” is made up of minor texts.

The Avesta is, therefore, a collection of texts compiled in successive stages until it was completed under the Sāsānians. It was then about four times larger than what has survived. A summary of its 21 books, or nasks (of which only one is preserved as such in the Vidēvdāt), is given in one of the main treatises written during the brief Zoroastrian renascence under Islam in the 9th century: the Dēnkart, the “Acts of the Religion.” It is written in Pahlavi, the language of the Sāsānians.

Other works in Pahlavi include, besides a translation and commentary on the Avesta, the Bundahishn (“Primal Creation”), a cosmology. Most Pahlavi books are anonymous, such as Mēnōk-i Khrat (“Spirit of Wisdom”), a lucid summary of a doctrine based on reason, and the Book of Artāy Virāf, which describes Virāf’s descent into the netherworld as well as heaven and hell and the pleasures and pains awaiting the virtuous and the wicked. There are also a few signed works, such as those of the two brothers Zātspram and Mānushchihr, or Mardān-Farrukh’s Shkand-Gumānīk Vichār (“Final Dispelling of Doubts”), an apology of the Mazdean religion directed against Manichaeism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Finally, there are Zoroastrian books written in Persian, either in verse or in prose. The latter include the correspondence exchanged between Zoroastrians of Iran and India and the treatise entitled ʾOlemā-ye Islām (“The Doctors of Islam”), with decidedly Zurvanite tendencies.

God

Zarathustra’s silence on Mithra is not easy to interpret. Since this god was closely associated with Varuna in India and with Varuna’s likely substitute in Iran, Zarathustra can hardly have ignored one-half of this divine pair without a definite purpose. Otherwise, it might be presumed that Mithra was included in the formula “Mazdā and the [other] ahuras”; however, Mithra is called in the Later Avesta (non-Gāthic) an ahura; so is Apām Napāt, a fire or brightness in the waters, corresponding to the Vedic Apam Napat. As for Verethraghna (the entity or spirit of victory), it seems that since he took over the function of Indra, who was a daeva, he could not be called an ahura, but in order to mark his belonging to the world of ahuras he was called ahuradāta, “created by an ahura.”

It is in the framework of the religion of the ahuras, hostile to the cult of the daevas, that Zarathustra’s message should be understood. He emphasized the central importance of his god, the wise Ahura, by portraying him with an escort of entities, the powers of all the other gods, in an array against the forces of evil.

The moral dualism expressed in the opposition Asha–Druj (truth–falsehood) goes back at least to Indo-Iranian times, for the Veda knows it too, as rita-druh, though the contrast is not as sharply defined as in the Avesta. Between these two principles, the Twin Spirits made an ominous choice, the Bounteous One becoming in thoughts, words, and deeds a partisan of Asha, ashavan, while the other became dregvant, partisan of the Druj. After them it was the daevas’ turn, and they all chose wrongly. Ever since, the daevas have tried to corrupt each human being’s choice also.

To the army of the ashavans, headed by the Bounteous Spirit, was counterposed the host of the dregvants, under the Destructive Spirit, Angra Mainyu. Each combatant faced his exact counterpart: the Good Mind opposing the Bad Mind and Aramaiti being countered by Taromaiti.

In this battle the whole material universe is, through the entities, potentially enrolled, the Bounteous Spirit being the patron of humankind, Asha of fire, the Good Mind of the Ox, the Dominion of the metals, Aramaiti of the earth, Integrity and Immortality of the waters and plants. Moreover, since the entities are at once divine and human (because both the spiritual and material qualities of man partake of divine), everyone faithful to the wise Ahura can commune with him.

After Zarathustra, considerable changes occurred in the theology he had professed. The entities were reduced to mere deities, which were even separated into male and female. Never again were their names used to designate human faculties. This is probably a consequence of the resurgence of the ancient gods.

It is not known to what extent Zarathustra’s system was meant to be exclusively the cult of Ahura Mazdā. In the Later Avesta all the gods he had ignored emerged again, such as Mithra, Airyaman (whom he had replaced by Sraosha), Anahita, Apām Napāt, Verethraghna, and Vayu. This vast pantheon, still nominally headed by Ahura Mazdā, is similar to the compromise that Darius, according to the interpretation cited above, made between the cult of Auramazda and that of the gods of the nobility.

Not only did Zarathustra’s theology thus lose its exclusive position, but an internal change also modified its equilibrium and even threatened its very essence. The Bounteous Spirit was almost completely reabsorbed into Ahura Mazdā. Whereas in a yasht the two Spirits fought each other, in the Vidēvdāt Ahura Mazdā and the Destructive Spirit opposed each other by creating, respectively, the good and the bad things. This profoundly affected Zarathustra’s system, for Ahura Mazdā could no longer be the father of the Twin Spirits; he now faced, on equal terms so to speak, a sort of antigod. This alteration probably dates back at least to the 4th century bce, for Aristotle said in the Peri philosophias (“On Philosophy”) that the Magi preached the existence of two principles, Oromasdes and Areimanios.

In the cosmogony as expounded in the Bundahishn, Ormazd (Ahura Mazdā) and Ahriman are separated by the void. They seem to have existed from all eternity, when Ahriman’s invidious attack initiates the whole process of creation. The question of their origin is ignored, but it was implied, ever since Ormazd had taken the place of his Bounteous Spirit in the struggle against the Destructive Spirit. Since Ahura Mazdā could no longer be the father of the two adversaries, the question of their origin was inevitable.

A solution was provided by Zurvanism: it is Zurvān (Time) who is the father of Ormazd and Ahriman. But this solution upset the very essence of Mazdaism and was therefore condemned as heretical. Zurvanism was widely accepted, however, perhaps even prevalent, in Sāsānian times. Traces of it are found in Mazdean orthodoxy, some features of which cannot otherwise be explained.

In Mazdean orthodoxy, when Ormazd created the material world, he first produced from Infinite Light a form of fire, out of which all things were to be born. This form of fire is “bright, white, round, and visible from afar.” Gayōmart, the Primal Man, was also conceived as spherical, in the image of the sky. Mānushchihr writes that “Ormazd, the lord of all things, produced from Infinite Light a form of fire whose name was that of Ormazd and whose light was that of fire.” This phrase can be accounted for only as a clumsy adaptation of a Zurvanite text that must have said, in effect, that Zurvān created Ormazd.

The Mazdean quaternity is reflected in the calendar at Nisa in 90 bce. The Zurvanite speculation that preceded it probably dates back to the first centuries of the Arsacid period and thus was born in the wake of Hellenism and in connection with the spread of astrology.

Cosmology

In order to vanquish Ahriman, Ormazd created the world as a battlefield. He knew that this fight would be limited in time—it would last 9,000 years—and he offered Ahriman a pact to that effect. After they had created their respective material creations, Ahriman’s first attack was defeated by Ormazd with the help of the Ahuna Vairya prayer (the most sacred Zoroastrian prayer), and he lay prostrate for another period of 3,000 years, the second in a total of four. He was then stirred up by the prostitute (Primal Woman) and went back to the attack, this time in the material universe. He killed the Primal Bull, whose marrow gave birth to the plants and whose semen was collected and purified in the moon, whence it would produce the useful animals. Ahriman then killed Gayōmart, the Primal Man, whose body produced the metals and whose semen was preserved and purified in the sun. A part of it would produce the rhubarb from which the first human couple would be born.

The first human couple was perverted by Ahriman, and it is only with the advent of Zarathustra, after 3,000 years, that Ahriman’s supremacy came to an end. Ormazd and Ahriman then fight on equal terms until Ormazd, at the end of the last 3,000 years, finally will triumph.

The idea of a human being as a microcosm, already illustrated in the cosmogony, is further developed in the Bundahishn. As a result of the aggressor’s attack, each human being is mortal. But one does not die altogether. There are five immortal parts of a human being: ahu (“life”), daēnā (“religion”), baodah (“knowledge”), urvan (“soul”), and fravashi (“preexistent souls”). The latter term seems literally to mean “preeminent hero.” The conception that caused this term to be applied to the “manes” (spirits) or pitarah of Iran is that of a defensive, protective power that continues to emanate from a chief even after death. This originally aristocratic notion seems to have been vulgarized in the same way as, in Greece, any dead person came to be considered a hero, or, in Egypt, an Osiris. Zarathustra ignored the fravashi, but he was familiar with the daēnā. The latter term meant “religion” in both its objective and subjective senses.

Indian and Iranian beliefs in the afterlife have many features in common, probably dating back to the Indo-Iranian period: a feminine encounter, a bridge with dogs watching it, a heavenly journey. In the Katha Upanishad, one of the Upanishads (speculative philosophical texts in the Hindu tradition), a man’s soul is welcomed in heaven by 500 apsaras (cloud maidens). In Iran a man’s soul meets his own religion (daēnā) in the form of a beautiful damsel if he has lived justly; otherwise, he meets a hideous hag.

Either before this encounter or after, according to the various texts, the soul must cross a bridge. This, with the young girl and the gods, is attested in India in the Yajurveda and the Upanishads. In the Gāthās it is called the Bridge of the Requiter. It leads the good souls to paradise, but the bad ones fall into hell.

The soul has also to undergo a judgment; it appears before Mithra and his two companions, Sraosha and Rashnu. Finally it ascends through successive stages representing respectively a man’s good thoughts (the stars), good words (the moon), and good deeds (the sun) to the paradise (of infinite lights). In the Veda it is said only that the sojourn of the good deed is beyond the path of the sun. In paradise the soul is led by Vohu Manah, the Good Mind, to the golden throne of Ormazd.

Hell also has, symmetrically, four levels. For the souls whose good actions exactly balance their evil ones, there is an intermediate place.

Eschatology

Zarathustra used to invoke saviours who, like the dawns of new days, would come to the world. He hoped himself to be one of them. After his death, the belief in coming saviours developed. Zarathustra was expected to return, if not personally, at least in the form of his three sons who would be born, at intervals of a thousand years, from his semen. The last of these saviours, Astvat-ereta, or justice incarnate, was also simply called the Saviour (Saoshyans).

Only in the Pahlavi books is this theme systematically developed. It is dominated by the idea of a final return to the initial state of things. The first human couple had at first fed on water, then on plants, on milk, and at last on meat. The people in the last millennia will, at the advent of the three successive saviours, abstain in the reverse order from meat, milk, and plants to keep finally only water. The primeval combatants also have their counterparts at the end of time. The dragon that was killed in order to liberate the imprisoned waters will appear again at the resurrection to be killed by another hero. In the last great struggle, the host of good and the host of evil will vie with each other, and each soldier of Ormazd will defeat and kill his own special adversary. This will restore the state of peace that had prevailed initially. The wicked will then submit to an ordeal of molten metal and fire. Fire and Airyaman will cause the metals of the mountains to melt and to flow down as a river of fire. The whole of resuscitated humankind must traverse it; it will burn only the wicked, whereas to the just it will be as sweet as warm milk. The suffering of the wicked will last only three days, however, after which all humankind will enjoy much happiness. On the flattened earth (for the metal will fill in all the valleys), men and women, henceforth shadowless since they are sinless, will taste the bliss of family life. Hell will be sealed forever, and Ahriman will be either powerless or annihilated.